SSSCCCCRRREEEEEEEE
The griffon’s roar was loud enough to strip bark from trees and flesh from bone. But Building roads had been an excellent workout. A dome of quartz engulfed Liam, protecting him from the sound. He formed a sphere, sinking the structure into the dirt. As a talon raked the sphere tearing a slit in the quartz sphere before mother earth swallowed it. Another blow buffeted the capsule as it burrowed into the dirt. swapping positions with extant material to avoid creating any signs of passage. Talons and beak tore into the soft forest loam. Trying to dig up the tormenting insect. Liam’s breath began to heat the small capsule, in moments his mind began to fog, to grow dizzy as he deplete the oxygen within the capsule.
Entombed within the earth there was no light, leaving him blind. Only his mana sight could guide him now. Liam redirected the sphere ordering it to rise. Dirt pressed into the gap, depleting half of the capsule's volume before he could reseal the orb. The sphere floated through the dirt, dodging roots as Liam tunneled under the nearest tree and emerged on the other side.
Crystal breached dirt, cracking as Liam opened it. Fresh air filled his lungs, bringing light back into his blind eyes. He staggered backwards, shutting his eyes and focusing entirely on his mana sight.
The griffon wasn’t moving, it knelt in a chasm, having dug forty feet into the dirt before Liam surfaced. He’d been underground for far too long, a few more seconds and he might have suffocated. A shudder ran down his spine, he’d come too close. Liam drank in the air, grateful to be alive.
With its digging paused, silence owned the forest. Until a gasp of air alerted the monstrosity. It summoned a wind blade and hurled it towards the offending insect, carving through a tree on its way to Liam. Wood screamed as it was severed. Liam ducked, conjuring a shadowshield as wood and dirt became shrapnel. Pelting him with darts that should have skinned him alive. Weakened by the blade, the tree teetered, falling sideways to crash into one of its nearby fellows. The trunk snapped–
–shooting forward and sending Liam flying, just as Karnak had in Khereshetal’s slavepen.
Instead of landing on his head like last time, he extended both arms, conjuring wind to make a sort of Ironman pose complete with thrusters. It worked! Sort of. He stabilized, flying into a thornbush and cartwheeling over it, saved by his shadowshield. Til that shattered as well, no longer cushioning his cartwheels through the underbrush. He rotated twice more, boughs and bushes tenderizing him. Finally coming to a rest in a blackberry bush with quarter inch thorns pricking every inch of his backside.
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Thunder echoed through the woods as the griffon crushed an intervening tree, approaching Liam. He pulled on Selewyne’s staff, and found it entirely drained, so he reached for the second, and found that one missing. He swallowed and reached for the third, knowing if the staff was gone, he would be crushed. Wood and steel whispered peace to his fingers. Liam took hold of the staff just as the griffon reared back, collecting an orb of wind into its open beak.
“Great, it’s a pokemon charging up an attack. Next he’ll be shouting out his next move.” Liam grunted, dumping the third staff’s entire power in a single bolt of condensed darkness. This was the staff charged with the power of hundreds of slave collars, then augmented with Liam’s own fury.
The bolt ran wide, bending away from the griffon, out of the line of attack. Too low. The bolt sailed out of the griffon’s view.
He’d missed.
With its attack fully charged the griffon threw its head forward. The beam of wind blasted through the forest, shredding a thousand canopies and then a hundred trunks as it slashed down towards Liam’s unshielded form.
His smile never wavered.
He hadn’t aimed at where the griffon was, but where it would be. Exactly as he planned. The bolt of enslaved darkness collided with the griffon’s eye, held below it with an unbreakable holy ward. An unstoppable force met an immovable object, skull smashing into the ward. Right after it squished through the griffon’s eye. Mutual destruction occurred, skull shattering as the ward expelled its mana, fading out of existence. Then the bolt of darkness found its true target.
With the eye popped, and the skull cracked, the bolt of darkness hit the brain and exploded. Catastrophic damage occurred within the monster’s skull, lobotomizing and permanently retarding the beast. Its wind beam, no longer governable, detonated in a sympathetic explosion, vaporizing the beast’s head entirely.
But Liam had to be sure it was dead.
It had four wings and four legs, way more limbs than anything naturally needed. Who knew if it had a spare brain hiding somewhere? So Liam channeled his earth affinity, reaching out to grasp the eight spears of his teardrop. They were in the creature’s spine, only one of them had found a nerve, the others had gotten stuck after impacting vertebra. He corrected that, using the spears as eight quartz scalpels to carve through the monstrous spine in four places, then burrowed the spears into its heart, reshaping them into blades and rotating them rapidly in a circle, a sort of eight bladed blender that eviscerated any capacity for life.
“Keep me away from my MILF, and I'll murder you.” Repeated Liam, already moving the eight blades to dice the creature into workable chunks.
He had one last duty here.
To throw a chicken nugget festival.